Is it Facebook? Maybe Apple? No, SEO is the toughest competitor against Google. It might be a bit surprising, but many of the small agencies around the world are Google’s biggest rivals.
Think about the share of clicks in a search result that go to the organic results compared to the ads. Of course, this varies quite a bit between keywords and phrases, but for the sake of our discussion, let’s say it’s split 50/50.
This means there are two ways to access Google’s incredibly targeted and profitable traffic. You can pay Google, or you can choose to pay someone else.
Not only does this mean that Google misses out on ad revenue that instead goes into the SEO agencies’ pockets, but it also means they have a competitor selling a product very similar to theirs. It’s their traffic that is being sold. The buyer can choose someone else if they feel AdWords is getting too expensive. If the cost per click gets TOO high on AdWords, there is always the alternative to access the traffic through SEO. Instead of a monopoly on that traffic, Google suddenly faces competition.
Right now, SEO is often more cost-effective than AdWords over time. In the very short term, AdWords can be clearly more effective, and our recommendation, as always, is that you should do both as long as they remain profitable. However, if you lose profitability in one of them, shift the budget to the other channel.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.